Tea with Tas
by lotrluv
Summary: Tas meets Pippin while he's having his tea!


**Disclaimer: Sadly, I own none of these characters.**

Now, we won't go into detail about how Pippin came to be in Kendermore, but let's just say he and Gandalf had a bit of an arguement and well... here was Pippin, sitting across the table from a curious kender named Tasslehoff Burrfoot.

Tas looked up from his morning tea and was quite surprised as he discovered that there was another person sitting at his table.

_How odd_, Tas thought, _he looks like a kender but then he doesn't ... Uncle Trapspringer told me something about kender who don't really look like kender once, although I can't seem to remember what he had said they were called..._

The kender-like being looked around frantically, and shouted something that sounded like, "Gandalf!"

"Excuse me," said Tas, putting down his spoon and holding out his hand from across the small table. "I'm Tasslehoff Burrfoot. You can call me Tas. Who are you? How did you get here? My, that's a nice brooch you have. What is a Gandalf? I've never heard of one of those."

The kender-like person looked curiously at the enthusiastic kender, then reached out and shook his hand. "My name's Peregrin Took. But you can call me Pippin. I don't like being called Peregrin."

Tas grinned. "Why, hello Pippin. That's a nice name. I've never heard of anyone called 'Pippin' before."

Pippin laughed. Then he asked curiously. "What are you?"

Tas looked offended. Anyone could see he was a kender, and proud of it.

_Maybe he's new to Krynn,_ thought Tas, _or maybe he's just been traveling away from kender so long he forgot what we are! My, I would love to hear where he's been! Then I can tell him about the time Tanis saved me from a burning dragon that wasn't really a dragon!_

"I'm a kender," Tas said proudly, drawing himself up. "A hero of the Lance!"

"A what?" asked Pippin.

"A hero of the Lance!" Tas repeated.

"What's that?"

"You don't know what a hero of the Lance is?" Tas asked in astonishment. "You must have a very bad memory!"

Pippin frowned. "No, I don't. I've never heard of a kender, and I don't know what a lance is."

Tas stared at Pippin. _He _is_ out of his mind,_ he thought in wonder.

"Then again," said Pippin, "We hobbits don't get out much. Except that I was one of the Fellowship of the Ring. I would've thought I'd heard of everything when I was in the Fellowship, but - Oh, no! Gandalf's sent me somewhere I don't know!"

"What's a hobbit?" Tas asked again, genuinely puzzled. "And who is Gandalf?"

"You don't know Gandalf? Well, he's a wizard, and - Hey! Where'd my brooch go?"

While Pippin began searching frantically for his brooch - which had recently been returned to him by Aragorn - Tas became quite excited.

"A wizard?" he said, his eyes widening. "I know a wizard! Well, I know a lot of wizards, in fact." He began counting them off on his fingers. "Let's see, there's Palin, and Jenna, and Dalamar, and Raistlin... well, Raistlin doesn't count anymore I guess because he doesn't have his magic but he used to be the greatest wizard on Krynn, did you know? He and I are good friends, although I haven't really forgiven him for killing my gnome friend -"

"Hey!" exclaimed Pippin, who'd been crawling under the table the entire time Tas was talking, and was now staring intently at one of Tas's pouches. "That's my brooch!"

" - because he really didn't deserve... what? Oh, this? I wonder how that got in there!"

Pippin angrily snatched his brooch from Tas. Then, carefully sitting down again, he asked, "Where am I?"

"Why, in Kendermore!" Tas said.

"Where's that?" asked Pippin.

"Where all the kender live!" said Tas.

"What are kender?" asked Pippin.

"Well," said Tas, eager at the chance to explain, "We are the quickest, smartest, nicest, and most trustworthy people on Krynn! Except for the knights," he added as an afterthought, "They always do what the Code and the Measure tell them."

Pippin, now dizzy with all this new information that he could make absolutely no sense out of, asked Tas if he had some Longbottom Leaf.

Tas frowned. He had not heard of Longbottom Leaf before.

"I have leaves, if that's what you mean," he said, "They're all over the place. But I doubt any of them have long bottoms."

Pippin sighed. "Never mind. Can I have some tea, then?"

"Sure!" Tas jumped up and, within a matter of seconds, placed a steaming hot mug of tea in front of Pippin. "It's very good tea. My Uncle Trapspringer's recipe. He was a very good cook, mind you. He taught me how to make all sorts of things like fried jellyfish and grilled potatoes and all sorts of things... Tika has very good potatoes at the Inn, have I told you about the Inn? It's a wonderful place in Solace, and Caramon and Tika Majere live there and it's a very interesting place because it has Raistlin's Room and - "

Pippin zoned out a bit, listening to Tas's constant rambling.

" - a pile of white chicken feathers! I didn't know what happened, and Fizban was nowhere to be found! I panicked, and, as my Uncle Trapspringer would say, I had a nasty bit of thought on the brain, because I thought Fizban was gone and - "

Pippin yawned and finished his tea.

"Good," he said. "Time for second breakfast!"

Tas stopped in the middle of his rambling to hear this strange pronouncement.

"Second breakfast?" he asked, eyes widening. "I've never had two breakfasts! I'm quite afraid I'd get too full."

"Not at all," said Pippin. "I couldn't go without second breakfast! But, mind you, you don't want to have four pieces of _lembas_ for second breakfast, because then you really _will_ be full. I learned that the hard way."

And he took out three packs of lembas bread.

"Wait... one, two, three... Tas!"

"What?" asked Tas innocently.

Pippin was now beginning to learn just what exactly kender were. Snatching his fourth lembas from Tas's pouch, he stuffed it back into his own.

"Wow!" said Tas, "Now how did that get there? You must sure be glad I found that for you, or else you would've lost it!"

Pippin rolled his eyes.

Suddenly there was a bright flash of light, and an old, gray-haired, bearded man wearing a big hat and holding a staff appeared.

"Fizban!" yelled Tas gleefully. But when he looked more closely, he realized it wasn't who he'd thought. "Wait," he said, "You're not Fizban! You look like him, but your nose is much too large and your eyebrows are much too bushy to be Fizban!"

The old man frowned and looked at Pippin.

"Come, Peregrin," he said. "Time to go."

"Gandalf, why did you send me here in the first place?" Pippin demanded.

Gandalf muttered something incoherently.

"So _this_ is Gandalf!" said Tas in wonder. He held out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Gandalf! I'm Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I suppose you'd like to call me Tasslehoff instead of Tas, since you called Pippin Peregrin. He doesn't really like being called that, you know."

Gandalf raised his eyebrows and did not take the kender's hand. Shutting his eyes, he began to recite a spell, and began to raise his staff - then he realized his staff was no longer in his hand.

He opened his eyes and saw the kender standing there trying to stuff Gandalf's staff into his pouch.

Gandalf roared and grabbed the staff from Tas.

Tas scowled. "Well you don't have to be rude about it. I was only trying to give it back to you!"

Gandalf lowered his head to the kender and a small smile formed on his face. "Thank you," he said, and straightened up.

"Come, Peregrin, it's time to go home."

As he recited the words to a spell, Pippin grinned at Tas and, right before he and Gandalf disappeared in a flash of light, he said, "May the hair on your toes grow long!"

Tasslehoff smiled back and then became very confused and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out if that was a compliment or an insult. He concluded that it must be a compliment, and told it to all his kender friends. From that day on, the phrase, "May the hair on your toes grow long" became one of the many kender phrases on Krynn.


End file.
